Indi and Shru have been making an effort to convince me of the merits of the McRice. I’ve responded with stubborn scepticism. I don’t eat McDonalds (it’s not food snobbery, or maybe it is) but I’ll eat anything from the grimmest vaddai on the train to Trinco, to the offaly offerings served behind the butchers at Malay street. I’ve even been known to indulge in the odd bucket of KFC- but at McDonalds I draw the line. Why this particular prejudice? Doesnt Ronald need love too?
Because I really don’t see the need to pay Rs. 300-400 for a pitiful excuse for a hamburger. At KFC you order greasy friend chicken and you get greasy fried chicken but at McDonalds your order a hamburger and you get measly a strip of reprocessed road kill (at best) in a over-sweet bun that is an insult to meat patties everywhere.
Anyway, apparently having discovered that Sri Lankans, because of their non beef eating tendencies or more likely because they know rubbish when they taste it, aren’t eating too many of their pitiful burgers McDonalds has taken to serving, guess what? Fried chicken, on top of rice. Apparently this is a McRice and according to Shru and Indi it’s a perfectly decent lunchtime repast. My mother did always say – if other people can eat it and enjoy it, you can at least try it. So the maxim that’s led me to contend with scorpions on a stick in China, the fat from a bear in Siberia and a haunch of dog in Vietnam led me to confront this rather unlikely meal.
Literally rice, not with any meat or vegetables (which I thought was the point of fried rice) fried in whatever unfortunate substitute for oil McDonalds uses, topped with a flat pancake of fried chicken and some vegetables (that seemed to have been cooked separately) heaped on the side. This all comes packed into one of those Styrofoam boxes that generally foretell culinary bad tidings and looked utterly dry. To remedy the situation an uninspiring sachet of curry sauce is supplied but the brown ooze that drips out of the bottle is of such an unfortunate colour and consistency that you can only be reminded of a certain other unwelcome runny brown liquid. In sum it looks so unappetizing that a whole live octopus raw from a Korean market (sannakji) would have been preferable. Still YAMU demands courage and knowing that good Colombars need to know the merits or demerits of even this unpromising pile I closed my eyes held my nose and let my spoon plot its course…
The horror.
The verdict.
Edible.
But honestly a long way from good. I mean, fried chicken is fried chicken so it’s usually fine, but this was the sort of fried chicken you can feel turning to lead in your stomach. The rice was utterly tasteless – dyed orange in a mockery of biriyani it was really hardly worth eating and the vegetable – onions and cucumbers capsicum from what I could tell – were a slimy mess that was best avoided. I was able to get about half the packet down with the aid of some Flower Drum Chilli Paste but then asbestos dust might be palatable with enough FDCP.
In all seriousness I’d take your average kade fried rice + some chilli paste over this MC Rubbish any day. All it’s really got going for it is that piece of fried chicken which is something that only fast food chains seem to be able to produce… but if you’re doing fried chicken stick to KFC or maybe encourage some of the local businesses (which now seem to have a mania for importing mediocre fast food chains – we got BreadTalk and now TGI Fridays is on it way) to import Popeyes…
